Through the corridors of my mind,
I wonder if I will find you.
Searching, searching,
So many doors...
I open one door
And I see your smile,
Beckoning to me.
I come closer
And you’re gone.
Turning away
I go to another
But you’re not there either
Just a glint in the eye
Dancing on the beams
In the shadow of memory.
I wrote this poem over 20 months ago... a portent of times to come, so it seems..
Today.. well.. I have been waking up to some rather startling realizations. The biggest one has been that I haven't a clue who I am!
After nearly 40 years of following esoteric pathways, study, meditation, ritual, dreams.. all the possible combinations that I could find to "know thyself", and work at and with, "healing", inner-child work, emotional body work.. you name it.. I find that after all this, I am kind of blank.
Who am I? Do I even exist? Or was the self-image of "I" so strong that I gave it Life? So many "I's" but not enough "eyes"..
My "I", was so wrapped up in my children, that I didn't even see it as being so. I learned a lot, raising a child with many problems, (though now I lso wonder how many of his problems were possibly my "I's"..)
Now my daughter and granddaughter have left for distant shores; my son too; lots of changes around me, and I am blank.
I have been a daughter, a wife, a mother, a lover, a friend (brings to mind that song.. (yes, I've been a bitch too!) so many "I's" and a par tof me recognizes these different roles. However, at times, they did not take the part of roles but became "me", and added to the image that I had of myself. I know they were not just roles, because I was attached to them, all of them.. oh, not all at the same time, some concurrent and some in sequence.
If anyone had asked me how I would be after my kids had left home.. I would have answered "ecstatic"!! My aim had been to 'grow' them to become self sufficient and go off on their own adventure of life - something I realize in retrospect was something I didn't have. The cliched "lived my life through my children really applied to me, though I would have denied it with my dying breath! I had my own interests, my own life.. and when the kids finally left home.. well a new adventure would beckon... er.. not!
I fell apart, and am still.. though I smile at the absurdity of it all.. it has been and is really hard.
I am learning to watch my mind.. it is too clever for my own good (a friend told me) and will provide me with all the "reason" I need to justify my present emotions; and they are very mixed..
Inside I am crying. If I had wings, I would take off and fly away into the heavens. There is a star that calls to me, deep in the darkness of the void, and if I could but reach it, I would remember who I am.
